All England Badminton Open Championships 2020: PV Sindhu moves into 2nd round

PV Sindhu

pv-sindhu

It was a great start for PV Sindhu who defeated Zhang Beiwen of United States of America in two straight sets by 21-14, 21-17 to move into the 2nd round of the All England Badminton Championships played at Arena, Birmingham on Wednesday.

The World Champion started off to an aggressive note taking an early 2-0 lead. Sindhu played with aggression and put the USA player under pressure with smashes. Zhang came back strongly to level the things at 6-6. Both players took alternate points till 9-9. The Indian took 2 points in succession to have an 11-9 lead at the interval. After the interval, Zhang tried her best to come back into the game, but the Indian showed her domination to win the first set easily at 21-14 in just 17 minutes.

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In the second game, Sindhu again played with aggression initially before committing a lot of mistakes either hitting in the net or hitting out wide. Zhang created pressure with great smashes and left the Indian wanting. At the interval, USA player had an 11-9 lead. After the interval, Sindhu continued to make mistakes and trailed 11-15. From 15-11, the World Championship took four points in succession to level the scores at 15-15 and showed her domination over the USA player to win the second set easily at 21-17 to move into the 2nd round.

It was a good performance by Sindhu who looked in decent form with smashes and drop shots which auger well for her in the upcoming tough matches. She will take on the winner of Nitchaon Jindapol of Thailand or Sung Ji Hyun of South Korea in the 2nd round.

This is an important tournament for Kidambi Srikanth and Saina Nehwal as they will be looking to take points in order to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics 2020.

The mixed doubles pair of Pranav Chopra and Sikki Reddy went down fighting to Zheng SW and Huang Y Q of China in three sets by 13-21, 21-11, 17-21 to be knocked out.

Kidambi Srikanth, Sai Praneeth, Parupalli Kashyap, Saina Nehwal will play their 1st round matches later today.